In the history of ideas, context is all.
And as New York has demonstrated all too glaringly in recent years, abject obedience to the conventional idea of context may violate the expanded context of contemporary urban life.
They range from ideas about the context, ideas about the drivers of change, ideas about the cause-effect relationships between interventions, outcomes and context, as well as individual and organizational values.
Consider NBC, who are so patronisingly obsessed with the idea of context that they didn't even show Rio's opening ceremony live.
Like every substantial building that has gone up in Manhattan in the past decade, Saana's design demonstrates the fecundity that occurs when the idea of context is distinguished from mere adjacency.
Nick Dennis, the deputy head at Berkhamsted School, says other schools, including government-funded ones, could do something similar to Bedales – but the school has a tradition for doing things differently and to transplant the idea without context would be problematic.
"Credit default swaps are a great idea in context," said Jack Ciesielski, an accounting guru and the publisher of The Analyst's Accounting Observer, an accounting advisory service for investment professionals.
She blogs at Wandering Gaia For some examples of using narrative to explain a complex and thought-provoking idea (plus context and analysis) read Carl Zimmer's blog on the human lake.
"There have been one or two attempts to make use of it, like the Ultimate Music Guides, but it is coming up with the idea and context for the material.
A simple idea of context in location is the "I am at Work", "I am at Home" problem.
